Enjoy your hollier Tim.

Yeah.

Enjoy your hollier Tim.

Yeah.

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Acast is home to the world's best podcasts, including the David McWilliams podcast. I'm grandmam and the one you're listening to right now.

Tortoise.

The Al Rashid Hotel is just a short walk from the banks of the river Tigris in central Baghdad. It's got mahogany walls, a marble lobby, and a swimming pool. And back in the nineties, it's considered the height of iraqi luxury. Only the top tiers of society are seen here, and it's where lots of foreign journalists stay when they're in town. Like Arnold Koskins.

I was a war correspondent at that time in Iraq. When the war broke out, I was staying in a very famous Rashid hotel.

Arnold Koskins is in Iraq because Baghdad is under attack. He's there chasing the story. And with its huge cellar, the al Rashid hotel is packed full of people trying to stay safe.

And during the bombardments, because Rashid had a huge seller, I met a foreigner in the lobby.

Most westerners have already left the country, and this foreigner in the lobby isn't a journalist. So I, Arnold Koskins notices him.

At that time, short wave radios were forbidden in Iraq because Saddam Hussein didn't want people outside Iraq telling about his regime. And I saw him walking with a small radio, and I went up to him and we chat a little bit. He was very pro Saddam Hussein.

The man asked for a favor. There are no phone lines between Iraq and Europe, and he wants the journalist to pass a message to his family so they know he's okay. Arnold Koskins agrees.

After five minutes, he walked away.

It's a fleeting moment in the chaos, but something about it sticks with the journalist. So when he gets home, he calls the man's family, as promised, job done. But Arnold Coskins can't shake the feeling that there's more to this mysterious, well connected foreigner. So he starts trying to gather as much information about him as he can.

He made this mistake by writing down this telephone number of his former wife in Switzerland as to convince her. But then she talked little bit by little bit.

Did she say what business he was doing? No.

Well, not exactly. Only that he was doing business, that he was a businessman.

The journalist can tell he's onto something because he's not the only one looking for this guy.

Later on, I figured out that he was running away from the Americans because they wanted this arrest and extradition to the United States because of the export of chemicals. And it was me that had to tell us custom that he was in Iraq.

Who does he call?

There was a dutch reporter, Special Agent Dennis Bass.

I called him a couple of times, and he was very busy with it as well.

The man Arnold Koskins is interested in is on the run for buying hundreds of tons of thiodolycol, that the mustard gas precursor from Alkalak, the chemical company in Baltimore. And special agent Bass has been after him for years. Except he's not who you think he is. This isn't Peter Walacek. The man in the hotel lobby is another gas man.

It was the same chemical. Large quantities shippers owned. Containers, falsified documents. Same thing going to Iraq.

This other gas man has his own fascinating story. But the way that story was revealed to the world means he's ended up with a very different outcome to Peter Wallacek, because justice did eventually catch up with him. And it was digging into this parallel case that I discovered significant clues about why that hasn't happened. For Peter Walacek, I'm Chloe Hegemuthao from Tortoise. This is the gas man. Episode four, the other gas man. When I first came across the story of Peter Valasek, how he'd managed to get away with selling dangerous chemicals to Iran, I found it so compelling because it felt like I'd stumbled on something unique. I genuinely thought a case like his would be a one off. That's why finding out that another european man was buying the same chemical from the same us company at the same time and sending it to the other side in the same war was all the more startling. It was special agent Bass who first discovered this second trafficking network. When he was going through that trawl of papers he seized from the chemical.

Company in Baltimore, we found a completely separate operation that was so similar in how things were done. It was really uncanny.

And there was one name at the heart of it, Franz van Anrat, the mysterious man in the hotel lobby, a dutch national who'd already sent multiple large orders to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, a regime widely known to have been using chemical weapons for years. So Dennis Bass started building a second case.

And so we prepared an extradition request for Italy and knew that he traveled to Italy at times because of the residence. And his wife was back and forth between Italy and Switzerland, and so the Italians accepted it and arrested him.

It was the chemical sales to Iraq that gave Franz van Anrath those houses in Italy and Switzerland. Before that, he'd been languishing in middle management at a chemical company. He was a clever man, but he didn't have any formal qualifications. What he did have was a gambling habit and expensive tastes. So when he got a call in the mid eighties from an iraqi guy he knew asking if he could help source and ban chemicals, he jumped at the chance. He quit his job and started working for Saddam Hussein. And he was very good at it. He got plenty of shipments through, no problem. So it's a shock when the Italians suddenly arrest him and he finds himself in prison. But after a few months, a judge rules against his extradition to the US and he's released. The Italian Supreme Court would later say that was a mistake and he should have been extradited, but it's too late. Just like Peter Waleschek before him, Franz van Anrat walks away and vanishes.

Oh, I was, like, devastated. It was difficult to get him. It took a long time. And so, you know, what could I do?

What I find so remarkable is that given how exciting and complex the Waluschek and van Anrak cases are, it's boring administrative protocols that end up derailing both of them. And eventually Dennis Bass had to move on. He was busy with other customs investigations, but both cases remained open and both men were on Interpol's most wanted list.

Wanted by FBI. Illegal export of dangerous chemicals. Two of the profiteers of this illicit trade are international fugitives, Peter Valacek and Franz van Anrat. If you have any information, you should contact the nearest us embassy or consulate. The US may pay a reward for information that leads to the arrest of these fugitives.

When the dutch fugitive Franz van Anrat fled Italy, he left Europe and his old life at home altogether and sought the protection of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But Peter Valacek, the original gas man, returned to Germany when he escaped, and he spent the early nineties trying to carry on life and business as usual. Except now he was a wanted man known to Interpol. So every time he traveled, he was using multiple false identities. I've seen a list of names he was using back then. Peter Lohimi and some oddly english sounding ones. John Farmer, John Stuart Boardman. And every time he leaves Germany, he takes a risk. In 1994, that Interpol notice leads to him being arrested in Croatia and put in prison for months and then again in Austria in 2009. But he keeps being released because of quibbles over extradition laws. I can only try and imagine special agent bass frustration, bureaucracy, and human error always seem to be on the side of the fugitives. But this decades long game of cat and mouse is infuriating for Peter Walacek, too. All the arrests and the months he's spending sitting in prison are really getting to him.

So he turns back to old habits. He starts calling Dennis Bass, begging to be let off his charge. So would the phone just ring on your desk and you'd pick it up?

Yeah. You know, they'd say, there's a call for you, and it would be him. Yes, Agent Bass, this is Peter Wolczek. I said, oh, okay. You know what it's like. So I said, what do you want? And he said, I would like to put this behind me. I said, fine. Come back and turn yourself in. Do your time, and it'll be behind you. Well, I'm not doing that. Can't we work something else out? I said, what else is there to work out? I mean, that's it. You told me everything you did, so there's nothing I need to know from you. You pled guilty. We honored our part of the bargain, and so come back and do your time like a man. And he said, well, I can't do that. I said, well, I'm not surprised, but fine. Dont call me.

Peter Valasek is never totally safe, not from us law enforcement or from Special Agent Dennis Bass.

And I said to him, hey, look, this is how the rest of your life is going to be. You know, youre always going to have to look over your shoulder.

Hes right. But Peter Valacek is still free. And other than special Agent Dennis Bass, it seems like no one's really looking for him. Franz van Anrat is in a different situation because he's got someone else on his case. When Arnold Karskins, the dutch journalist, realizes that the man he bumped into in that hotel in Baghdad was Franz van Anrat, he makes it his mission to hunt him down. The chemical dealer is still being sheltered by the iraqi regime, but he might have met his match, because Arnold Karskins will eventually specialize in tracking down war criminals. He'll help put arms dealers and even Nazis behind bars. And Franz van Anrath will be his first target.

It takes many, many, many years to get them convicted, and journalism that don't stop after a month. But, you know, for years and years and years to get after the war criminal.

The dutch journalist believes that Franz van Anra is a war criminal.

I went a couple of times to Iraq, tried to find him, but I could not because he was hiding somewhere. I could not find out where he was staying.

But Arnold Koskins isn't about to give up, because the chemicals Franz van Anrap bought in Baltimore and sold to Saddam Hussein were dropped not just on the battlefield, but on villages and towns full of ordinary people.

My name is Farkonde Shafi. I go by Farah.

People like Farah Shafi.

I am a kurdish woman born in Sardasht.

Sardasht is a small city in Iran on the border with Iraq. When I ask Farrah Shaffi what it was like growing up there before the war, she gets quite emotional.

Very green, mountainous, beautiful summer, spring, fall, and winter, four seasons. People know each other very well. You didn't have to give address to the cab driver. Everybody knew everyone.

In the 1980s, during the Iran Iraq war, places like Sardash were right in the firing line, not just because they were on the front lines, but because most people who lived there were kurdish. Saddam Hussein was convinced that the Kurds were plotting against him, and so he made a particular point of bombing them. Farah Shafi and her family spent most of the war scattered, staying with friends in safer parts of the country. But by 1987, they were exhausted. Things seemed to be quietening down, and so they decided to brave it and go home.

We were there only one or two weeks, less than two weeks. My sister Farida hears that I have come back to Sardash. She says, I will go visit my sister. And she came.

The sisters haven't seen each other in years. They're excited to meet each other's youngest children for the first time, Farrah Shaffy's 18 month old son and her sister's one year old little girl.

She was pink cheeks, just like baby doll, honestly, just like a baby doll. And I looked at her. She was so pretty. And I hugged her and I kissed her. She was just so, so pretty.

It's a normal, happy afternoon, after years of war. Just two sisters catching up and playing with the kids. Farrah Shaffy's in the kitchen making them all tea. When she hears a noise outside.

I went to pour the water. And right in front of me by the window, I saw the clothes. And we all picked up the kids to go to the basement. Everybody is running to the same basement that we were heading to.

They hide and prepare for the sound of falling bombs. But instead, there's an eerie silence. And then, one by one, they begin feeling sick.

Then I realized everybody started vomiting over each other. Even we couldn't even make it to the one washroom that was there. Or the sink.

Those planes Farah Shafi had seen through the kitchen window. Weren't dropping bombs. They were spraying mustard gas. A chemical weapon made with thiodolycol. The substance Franz van Anrat had sold.

To the Iraqis and me my entire life. My worst nightmare was to see a scene like this.

When the family realizes what's happening, they panic and scatter. She clutches her son Ramir, and runs.

I looked at Ramir. Ramir doesn't cry. No noise, no nothing. Pale. And just had little bit white stuff coming out of the mouth.

Somehow, Farrah Shaffi and her son make it to a hospital. Where they receive treatment. And they begin to recover from their immediate symptoms. It's not until days later that she manages to find her sister.

And that was it when I saw them. Until I saw them again in hospital. My sister. And until I heard that Nahid was killed.

That tiny girl with the baby doll cheeks poisoned by the gas. Even now, Farah Shafi blames herself. If only she hadn't invited her sister over that day.

I have never forgiven myself. I have caused her to lose her daughter and her health. And my niece passed away. And my son stayed alive. So that feeling of guilt. I have feelings of guilt.

And it's not just guilt that's plagued Farah Shafi in the years since that attack on her city.

Diaph stenosis. And that's why I talk this way. Tracheal stenosis, reactive airway disease, bronchitis.

Mustard gas gets into your cells, and it can damage your DNA, leaving you with long term health problems. Farah Shafi's lungs have hardened, and her esophagus has narrowed. Her son, Ramir, has the same condition. They've both had operations and treatment for years. And still deal with pain on a daily basis. Just weeks before our interview, doctors told Farrah Shaffi they won't be able to operate on her again.

I know, I don't have a lot of years left. I know that very well.

The mustard gas Saddam Hussein dropped on Sardash that day killed around 130 people. Hundreds have since died from their injuries, and thousands more live with devastating long term health conditions. Less than a year after the mustard gas attack on Farah Shafi and her family in Sardasht, there was another chemical attack on the kurdish town of Halabja. This time, iraqi forces used a combination of mustard gas and sarin. 5000 people were killed and more than 10,000 injured. It's the scale of these atrocities that I keep coming back to when I think about Franz van Anrat. A guy in a nice suit making business deals from behind a desk and walking away as if that were the end of the story. Off to enjoy his life without a backward glance. But Farrah Schaffy will never be free from the consequences of Franz van Anrat's deals. And not just physically. She carries an unbearable burden of guilt for an event she had no control over. Guilt that, to my mind, rightly belongs to a man who had a hand in the making of that poisoned gas. What kind of person makes those choices without ever looking behind them?

That's what I really wanted to know when I spoke to Arnold Karskins. He spent years trying to understand Franz van Anra.

So I was. I was looking for him all the time. I think he was always in my, in my head.

Through interviews with sources and trips back to Baghdad, he slowly pieced together the life of luxury. Franz van Anrat was living in Iraq during the nineties and how he became friends with Saddam Hussein.

He was a womanizer, so he had girlfriends. I had contact with them. And I went to Iraq a couple of times in the nineties, but I could not find him.

In the end, those womanizing ways turned out to be quite useful for Arnold Karskins. He hit the jackpot with Franz van Anrath's ex wife, who was happy to dish the dirt. She's with him when those terrible reports of the chemical attack in Halabja appear on tv.

She said that he was very shocked because of the images. They were all over the world, you know, people in Jalapeno lying on the streets and kids everywhere, cattle every died. And he was very shocked.

Shocked because he knows that the mustard gas used was probably made with his chemicals. Not that shocked, though.

It took him a couple of days, but then he said, okay, I prefer to buy first class business class to all over the world and have this nice Fila that was for him more interesting than saying, okay, I stopped with this business and I go back to sort of poverty. Yeah, he has no confidence in that way.

If Franz van Anra hesitates, it's not for long, because he continues delivering chemicals to Saddam Hussein. After the attack on Halabja, Franz von.

Andrade was the type that you could say, well, on one hand, he was very friendly, like, to play with kids and things like that. And then he would order 100 tons of pure, difficult, actually, enough to murder thousands, thousands of people. So he had two sides, one way, he was a very nice guy. You could have a laugh and you had a drink with him, but he didn't mind to order the most terrible stuff to murder people.

Arnold Koskins wants to know if there are traits that run through these kinds of enablers. He's learnt about Peter Walacek from his conversations with Dennis Bass. And like me, he's fascinated with the parallel case to his investigation. And so he decides to give Peter Valasczyk a call. He wants to see what he has to say for himself.

He was the same, a nice guy you could call him. And I think he wanted to talk more than Franz Fernandez. But one way or the other, they always have an excuse. What they did, they sleep well as well, because they had this switch on, switch off concerning human rights, what you should do in your life, and how you should behave towards other people.

Franz van Anrat sees the effects of mustard gas on tv, and he decides to continue sending the chemicals to Iraq. Peter Valasczak, his german counterpart, told me he saw the effects of chemical weapons in person, that the Iranians took him to the battlefield to see the devastation.

They said, look, look where the dead people are. Yes, I saw it. The Iranians were dead hundreds.

He says that happened after he fled the US. So after he sent the chemical shipments, but I can't quite square the dates. The war was over by that time. It makes much more sense to me that the Iranians were taking him to the battlefield during the war to justify their need for chemicals. I've tried to check this with him, but he says he doesn't remember the details. But having seen those bodies, he tells me in his office that if he'd known that thiodolycol could be used to make mustard gas, he would have sold it to the Iranians anyway. It reminds me of that Paul McCartney quote. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. What's extraordinary to me about Peter Walacek and Franz van Anrat is that in their own ways, they appear to have seen through the glass walls, and they were still willing to sign the contract.

Hi, I'm investigative journalist Nicola Tallant, host of Crime World, a podcast all about criminals, drugs, and the sins of the underworld in Ireland and across the globe. Join me and my guests for a peek into the world of gangland crime, dirty money, and mysterious coal cases. With five brand new episodes per week, and sometimes even more, there's something for every type of crime podcast enthusiast. You can listen to crime world now.

Wherever you get your podcasts, Acast recommends podcasts.

We love the eighties had the general. The nineties had John Gilligan in the noughties. It was the reign of Martin Marlowe Highlander. His was a familiar path with success and power, and then the recklessness. He had to go because with him, an innocent young man doing an honest day's work died. Crime world presents caught in the crossfire the unsolved murders of Coke kingpin Marlowe Hyland and innocent Anthony Campbell Acast is.

Home to the world's best podcasts, including the David McWilliams podcast. I'm Grandmam and the one you're listening to right now.

At this hour, american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.

By 2003, after years of tension, America and its allies are ready to invade Iraq. They say they fear Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's no longer the safe haven Franz van Anrat relied on to evade the us authorities. So he plans to leave. And here's where his story really starts to diverge from Peter Valuschek's, because each decision he makes from here on is going to take him further away from the impunity Peter Walacek enjoys and closer to justice. In March, when the invasion begins, he smuggles himself out of Iraq in a car full of refugees, driving to Syria and hops on a plane back to the Netherlands. And he's not worried about getting arrested because he's been cultivating a relationship with an organization that's promised to protect him, the dutch intelligence service. They want to know whether Saddam Hussein actually has weapons of mass destruction. And who better to help answer that than the man who sold them to him in the first place? Franz van Anra is a goldmine of information for intelligence officers.

He was in a sort of safe house so they could extract all the information they wanted.

He tells them all about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program, namely, that there isn't one anymore. Franz van Anra is so confident in the protection the intelligence services are providing him that he agrees to an interview with one of the main dutch news channels. I can't really understand why he agreed to the interview. Maybe he had a taste for the spotlight. Perhaps he couldn't resist sharing his fascinating life experiences with the world. But in the end, I think it was probably ego. It'll turn out to be a huge mistake, one that will push him onto a different track from Peter Walusczak and take him from being a guy who got away with it to a guy who didn't. A round faced man with a big mop of bright white hair and glasses hanging off a chain. He has a slightly startled look, as if he hadn't imagined he'd be asked these kinds of questions. You're called a trader of death. That must be painful to hear, the reporter says. Yes, of course it is, he replies, because it's not true. The interviewer asks how he felt when he saw the images of the dead bodies in kurdish cities like Sardasht and Halabja.

Did he feel responsible? Yes, Franz van Anrat says, but, you know, that's just a feeling. I wasn't really responsible.

I still remember it as it were yesterday. I mean, how long is this ago? This is like some 20 years ago. I've done so many cases in between. I still see him sitting in that.

Screen, sitting on her sofa at home, watching all this on tv. Is Lisbeth Zechfeld, a human rights lawyer?

Well, he was so self confident. He was so like, I'm here in the Netherlands, and these people are far away, and I'm a businessman, and I do, and I did what businessmen do. These are two completely distinct stories, and they do not touch each other. And they will never touch each other.

Watching it now, it reminds me of my conversation with Peter Walacek. It's the same inability to accept responsibility. When the reporter pushes him about his involvement, Franz van Anrath pushes back. Lots of people die in the world for all sorts of reasons, he answers. You could hold hundreds of thousands of people responsible. It wasn't my decision to launch chemical attacks. Yes, I sold the chemicals, he says, but I'm not connected to those deaths.

And I then immediately, in my mind, built the bridge from here to there and say, we will connect you. Without any doubt, we'll try to connect you. And he opened the door for criminal prosecution, because I was not the only one watching. There was also the prosecutor watching.

I'm Fred Deaven, and I was a public prosecutor in the national prosecution department from 2003 till September 2006.

All it took was that tv interview.

That's the reason we started to investigate this. Myster Fernand. The television program in the late days of October 2003 were the first moments we started with the investigation.

Fred Teavan, the public prosecutor, and Lisbeth Zegfeld, the human rights lawyer, joined forces. They want to get Franz van Anrat charged with war crimes and genocide. Fred Tevin focuses on the physical evidence and Lisbeth Zegfeld on the victims. But first they need to clear something up. What have the intelligence services promised him?

They promised him that there would be no prosecution, but they were not allowed to do so. Though there was a decision about the minister of justice in the spring of 2004 that there was no reason to give him a free ticket.

With his protection gone, they begin pulling the case together. Fred Teavan will have to prove a chain of evidence that links the specific thiodolycole Franz van Anra ordered from Baltimore to the mustard gas canisters dropped on people like Fera Schaffee in places like Sardasht and Halabja. And they also travel to Baltimore to speak to Dennis Bass, who's retired by now, but who's very happy to dig through all his evidence files and share everything he has with them. And of course, he's delighted that finally one of his cases might end in a trial, and even happier when he realizes that by escaping justice in the US, Franz van Anrat has got himself into a whole load more trouble.

I thought that was great, because had I gotten them, he would have probably gotten five years and probably would have been out in three, two and a half years. So that was good. I was happy to hear.

In 2005, a year after that tv interview, Franz van Anrat finds himself sitting in a courtroom. Dennis Bass is there to give evidence, and so is Arnold Koskins.

He looked at me and was always a little bit nasty looking at me, understood. But actually he was to blame himself. He was wanted to talk too much, thought, well, nobody can harm me, and put his head in, in the rope himself.

The prosecution argues that Franz van Anra is responsible not only for war crimes, but for the genocide of the Kurds. One by one, kurdish survivors of chemical attacks give their testimony. And the whole time they're on the stand, he doesn't look at them, not even for a second.

And when they spoke and I spoke, he looked at the top of his shoes. So he had his head bowed to the floor, and he wouldn't look at the people. Neither me and that's how we remained throughout their stories.

To me, it seems like Franz van Anrak can't accept that his actions had consequences, and those victims are the living proof, and that's why he can't look at them. He never even takes the stand to give evidence. His lawyer speaks for him, arguing that he had no idea how the chemicals he was selling would be used, so he cant be held responsible for what happened to them. But the judge doesnt buy it. The prosecution proves that after 1984, Franz van Anrat was the sole supplier of thiodolycol to Iraq. So all mustard gas attacks after that must have involved his chemicals.

So there was a conviction for the war crimes and the production of mustard. It's not a genocide, it's war crimes.

They can't make the charge of genocide stick. But Franz van Anra is found guilty of complicity in committing war crimes. He's given a. A 15 year sentence, and when he appeals, it's increased to 17 years. He also has to hand over more than a million euros he earned selling the chemicals to Iraq. Watching from his retirement in the US, Dennis Bass is delighted.

Yeah, I felt great, great to hear that. You know, they charged him, they tried them, they convicted him and they put him away.

Lisbeth Zegfeld spent over a decade on the Franz van Anrak case. So I wanted to ask her opinion on the Peter Walashek case. Peter Walasek, a german national, was buying from Alcalaq the same chemical and selling to the Iranians.

Oh, selling to the Iranians, yes. Wow. Interesting. And what kind of evidence is there in terms of causality?

That's the thing. Something that's been playing on my mind ever since I found out about Franz van Anrat. A crucial difference between the two men. There isn't any causal evidence in the Peter Walacek case. No chain of chemicals leading from Baltimore to deadborn bodies and suffering survivors. Peter Valasek's chemical orders were placed in 1987 and 88. He was caught fairly quickly, and so his supply to Iran ended, and within weeks, so did the war. Iran has since admitted it was creating chemical weapons. And a us intelligence memo from the time mentions instances when Iran is said to have hit iraqi forces with mustard gas on two occasions in October 1987. The timing means it is feasible that these attacks could have contained Peter Valacek's chemicals. But there isn't enough evidence to prove that Iran was definitely responsible for these attacks, let alone to implicate Peter Valasek. We'll never be 100% sure. Two men take similar actions. They sell dangerous chemicals to regimes involved in a war. But there's only proof that one man's actions end in death and suffering. So am I being unfair to Peter Valacek? Does that mean that in some way he's less guilty?

Is there. Is there still a case to be made against him?

Yeah. As a lawyer, I would say you need those victims in order. I mean, you know, I can try to hit you and kill you, but if I don't, then I haven't done it. I mean, it's as simple as that. And so he may have violated export rules, which still, I mean, for that, it doesn't make any difference whether it's used or not. You're not allowed to export it.

Are Franz van Anrat and Peter Valasczyk equally culpable? Legally, no one is guilty of an export violation, the other of complicity to commit war crimes. And so, in a sense, it's luck. That means that his chemicals did not end up causing more damage.

Yeah, well, yeah, I think. Well, morally, you have a point, but.

I'm not sure a court of law is the only way to judge a man. There is this different standard, the moral one. And here I'd argue that the danger of being a middleman is that you can't control what happens after you hand over the goods. That's the risk you take when you break export rules to sell something like thiodolycol, that sometime after the money hits your bank account, the chemicals you're selling might end up corrupting the lungs of a child. Somewhere halfway around the world, both men sold those chemicals anyway. To me, it seems like Peter Valasek just got lucky. We'll never know what might have happened if the war had continued for a few more years and the iranian regime had had the opportunity to use those chemicals. And I was starting to think it was plain old luck that had helped him evade justice. But maybe it was just one of those things out of anyone's control. Until a phone call changed my mind. Franz van Anra was released in 2015 after spending ten years behind bars. And in a weird twist of fate, the man who signed his application for early release was the very same man who worked so hard to get him convicted.

Fred Tevin, the public prosecutor, was now a politician.

It's a little bit remarkable that I released von Umbrad.

You signed his only release? Yes.

As a state secretary for justice. I said, okay, you're now very old, and you can go a few years earlier, you can go to your family.

And now Franz van Anra has managed to vanish into the ether once again. I've heard he's no longer in the Netherlands, maybe in Switzerland, or perhaps Italy. I want to ask him about his side of the story, how he feels about his crimes now after all those years in prison. So I find a telephone number linked to his name and I give it a go. There's no answer. But then suddenly someone calls me back.

Go for it.

Go for it. Hello? Hello?

Yes, hello there. Good.

Very good afternoon.

You ring.

Yes, yes. Hello. I'm trying to reach Franz van Anrat. The person on the other end says he has nothing to do with that. Franz van Anrat. They just happen to have the same name and the call doesn't go well. Okay, no need to be so angry. Why would you be that angry? That's such a weird reaction, don't you think? We have one more number to try this time for Franz van Anrat's son. Yeah, hello? Is that Michael van Anrat? It's the same person as before. Hello, Mister Van Anrat? It's Michael van Anrat, the son. That's who we were speaking with earlier on his father's number. We explain what we're working on and ask whether he'd like to talk to us. It's a hard no, but we do chat for a while before he ends the call. I don't want to bother you. That's interesting. He's very angry, clearly. And I guess it's had a massive impact on his life. He grew up in Iraq as a result of this. There's no sense of responsibility. There's no sense of the fact that somebody other than him and his father might have been victims in this whole affair.

It's very much seen from his perspective.

And he knew about Peter Walesczek?

Oh, he knew exactly who Peter Valasek was. And I think that probably plays into his conspiracy theory. Why did this guy get away with it? Given that my father spent years in prison, and given that Michael, the son, has probably been stigmatized by what his father's done, the fact that Peter Valasek is still free and has never done a sentence for his crime must really just be salt in the wound for him. Over the phone, Michael van Anrak claims that it's not just Peter Valasek who got away with it. He tells us to look at other companies and the government's backing them, who he says did exactly what his father did, helped create chemical weapons, but have never had to pay for compensation or sit in a prison cell. Watching their life pass by. What if Michael van Anrat has a point? Could there be another, bigger reason that Peter Valasek has never been held to account? And if he got away with it once, what's to say he ever stopped? That's next time.

This is law. Long term suffering. And in the west, we tend to support those crimes from a distance. Making money without having the blood on.

Our own hands, that's the cost of doing business. Who do you think paid for the fine? I bet you it didn't come out of Peter Wolacheck's bank account. I bet you it came out of Iran's bank account.

I have many friends. They were all from the heart.

Like Hamas. Also like Hamas.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening to the gas man. It's reported by Chloe Hajimetheu and produced by me, Claudia Williams. It's written by both of us. Gary Marshall is the narrative editor and Jasper Corbett is the editor. The sound design is by Hannah Varrell. Original theme music by Tom Kinsella. With thanks to Owen Mull, Dan Kazetta, Martin Hahn, Kavita Puri, Matt Russell, and Katie Gunning. You can listen to more episodes today by subscribing to Tortoise plus or by downloading the tortoise app. You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise investigates while you wait for the next episode. And to hear more from our award winning newsroom. Search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts. Tortoise.

Hi, I'm investigative journalist Nicola Talent, host of Crime World, a podcast all about criminals, drugs, and the sins of the underworld in Ireland and across the globe. Join me in my my guests for a peek into the world of gangland crime, dirty money, and mysterious cold cases. With five brand new episodes per week, and sometimes even more, there's something for every type of crime podcast enthusiast. You can listen to crime world now, wherever you get your podcasts.